Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Yea Socialism!!!

Comrade!! Good news from the Western Front! The greedy capitalist American pigdogs have elected someone who can spread their wealth around and move them towards a European style collectivism. A healthy majority of them have become so programmed to look to government for the solutions to all their problems they've slowly stopped being able to rely on themselves. With their supremacy waning, with their drive and ingenuity giving way to dependence and submission, with fierce independence turning towards a more worldly and cooperative mediocrity we will soon have achieved everything we have always dreamed. A suicide rate like France! An unemployment rate like Germany! They have sought for change and now they're going to get it! Good News!

12 comments:

Ah, yes, the "Fairness Doctrine," with the proper propaganda principle of taking a positive word and twisting it into something else. In this case, a "fairness" that is anything but fair--the rescinding of Americans' core right of free speech.

Another propaganda piece: Obama's stressing that, in order to be truly patriotic, we Americans need to learn to sacrifice. Why don't you say what you really mean, sir? You want to "spread the wealth around" by taking my hard-earned paycheck and doling it out to folks who don't have a right to be dipping into my pocket.

Socialism is nothing more than Communism Lite, and neither system has proven itself as resoundingly successful as good ol' Western Capitalism.

But what have we to be so glum about? Mrs. Obama is finally proud to be an American. (Gee Whiz. Let me wipe the tears from my eyes.)

Yes, the Fairness Doctrine is the most stunning example of the American political tactic of Let's Call This Bill the Opposite of What It Is. It is typical liberalism: we can't compete in the arena of ideas so let's legislate our opponents away.

Evaluating the success of capitalism usually depends on who's doing the evaluating, the successful or the unsuccessful. While I'm a free-market type I also understand that perfect freedom leads to the ultimate success of one person who can then oppress others. So, ironically, a certain amount of regulation and 'un-freeness' is required through the power of government in order to keep markets free. The big differences between us is how far to let the pendulum swing.

For example, the credit crunch was created in America by the government telling lenders to make loans to people who otherwise couldn't afford them, i.e. restricting the freedom of lenders to choose how they loan money. It was intended to give the less fortunate a chance at the American dream. I'm not too terribly opposed to this if it's a reasonable percentage of the total loans, like maybe 3-5%. Our problem over here is that the government kept pushing for more and more of these sub-prime loans until they became about 20-30% of the market. It was a house of cards just waiting to be tipped over.

Got to say, as someone who reads and is involved in a lot of democratic politics (my wife is one of those State Dem leaders, after all) as well as stuff on the right, y'all can just relax about someone reintroducing the fairness Doctrine. NO ONE of the left is considering this, it is a strawman boogie man that is more illustrative of Rush Limbaugh's fears than any desire by any elected democrat. In fact, one of the Media watchdog organizations did a Lexus-Nexus search and could only find reference to the Fairness Doctrine on right-wing web sites and a few right-leaning media outlets.Asked directly about it, Obama replied that he thought it was a very bad idea. There are far more legitimate concerns for those on the right than this one ---no fears, the echo chamber of right-wing talk radio will not be polluted by required listening of outside ideas or concepts :)I am reminded of a study done 30+ years ago by a trade magazine for magicians. They polled a number of working magicians and asked them to list the 10 tricks most popular with audiences. They then polled actual audiences after performances. Only 3 tricks showed up on both lists. The professional magicians had no idea of which tricks the audiences liked best.If you really want to know what your new socialist masters are planning, go find out what they are telling thier supporters. I suspect you will not get the best inside information from those whose careers have been built by opposing them.A recent list on Red State had ten things to prepare to oppose that were going to be high priorities for the new adminsitration. They scored no higher in my estimation than the professional magicians did; most of the feared policies aren't even on the Democratic radar, and may have value as rallying cries, but not as any sort of productive way to expend political energy.

That, my friend, is most welcome news. I would love to be wrong about Obama. My wife asked me if I though he would be a better President than Clinton and I had to think for a moment. Clinton, as a person, was morally bankrupt but in the final analysis he didn't do as much harm as we thought he would. We got welfare reform and NAFTA out of him and were able to dodge socialized medicine. Obama is clearly the better man, husband, and father but it looks like he'll actually start doing a lot of the things I don't want him to do.